African Bureaucracy

Self-reliance was a cornerstone of Ujamaa socialism – the ideology of Tanzania from 1967 till the mid-1980s. In the post-Cold-War period socialist ideology was actually abandoned, together with the really valuable concept of self-reliance. As most African countries, Tanzania is crucially dependent on foreign aid. We argue that aid can play a positive part for Tanzania and countries like it, but only if it promotes their self-development which, in its turn, is possible only if a nation is or strives to become self-reliant. However, in contemporary Tanzania the culture of self-reliance has almost disappeared since national ideology has changed, and many people rely on foreign aid and national government, not on their own hard work. At the same time, the union of foreign donors and corrupt national bureaucracy results in Tanzania in aid without development that, as in the case of aid for mosquito bed nets, cannot promote self-reliance and, hence, socio-economic progress.
Keywords: Aid, civil society, development, self-reliance, state, Tanzania

Recent anthropological accounts of the state have demonstrated the potential for danger or illegibility in the public's encounter with the state. Much of this work has taken the perspective of the public, however, and less has been said about how functionaries of the state perceive their interactions with the public. This perspectival bias needs to be overcome through ethnographies of the state and of state bureaucracies in everyday practice. This article examines the Immigration Services Branch of the South African Department of Home Affairs, a state bureaucracy widely deemed “illegible” by South Africans and non-South Africans alike. It documents some of the factors that inform the actions of street-level bureaucrats, illustrating how bureaucrats develop systems of meaning to help them mitigate the challenges posed by an unpredictable populace and management hierarchy. These systems serve to stabilize these two unstable entities, but they also enable officials to act in ways that might run counter to official discourse while simultaneously upholding its legitimacy. Their stabilization efforts therefore incite a destabilization of the state, leading it to appear as “magical” or “illegible” to the public.

Zimbabwean displacement has significant implications for the evolution of state forms in Southern Africa. In South Africa, Zimbabwean migrants' claims to residence confront exclusionary immigration laws. The South African government officials who are responsible for enforcing these laws have helped migrants to circumvent protocols and procedures while simultaneously overstepping the bounds of their authority to prevent migrants from entering the nation's borders and residing within. Drawing upon a range of ethnographic and survey data, this study explores these two tendencies in government efforts to tackle smuggling across the Zimbabwean border, limit access to immigration permits and police undocumented residence in the city of Johannesburg. The article suggests that these seemingly contradictory developments – corrupt circumvention and overzealous enforcement – are both products of a single dynamic: the state's monopolisation of legitimate movement. The ‘state’ is not being captured but is helping to generate parallel and informal orders alongside conventional immigration law.

This paper deals with the transformation of “institutional culture” in bureaucratic agencies. This is explored in the context of post-Apartheid South African public sector reform, and more particularly that of migration management within the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). The paper assesses the effects on staff’s perceptions and practices of a politically driven attempt at inculcating a new sense of “service delivery”. Structural factors are not found to have been prevalent determinants explaining the difficulties in implementing the reform. It is rather the failure of the political leadership to address the lack of a shared sense of mission and the range of unintended, counter-productive effects, elicited by the reform itself which explain the overall incapacity to amend perceptions and behaviours among civil servants.

Zimbabwean displacement has significant implications for the evolution of state forms in Southern Africa. In South Africa, Zimbabwean migrants' claims to residence confront exclusionary immigration laws. The South African government officials who are responsible for enforcing these laws have helped migrants to circumvent protocols and procedures while simultaneously overstepping the bounds of their authority to prevent migrants from entering the nation's borders and residing within. Drawing upon a range of ethnographic and ...

Self-reliance was a cornerstone of Ujamaa socialism – the ideology of Tanzania from 1967 till the mid-1980s. In the post-Cold-War period socialist ideology was actually abandoned, together with the really valuable concept of self-reliance. As most African countries, Tanzania is crucially dependent on foreign aid. We argue that aid can play a positive part for Tanzania and countries like it, but only if it promotes their self-development which, in its turn, is possible only if a nation is or strives to become self-reliant. However, in contemporary Tanzania the culture of self-reliance has almost disappeared since national ideology has changed, and many people rely on foreign aid and national government, not on their own hard work. At the same time, the union of foreign donors and corrupt national bureaucracy results in Tanzania in aid without development that, as in the case of aid for mosquito bed nets, cannot promote self-reliance and, hence, socio-economic progress. Keywords: Aid,...

This paper deals with the transformation of “institutional culture” in bureaucratic agencies. This is explored in the context of post-Apartheid South African public sector reform, and more particularly that of migration management within the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). The paper assesses the effects on staff’s perceptions and practices of a politically driven attempt at inculcating a new sense of “service delivery”. Structural factors are not found to have been prevalent determinants explaining the difficulties in implementing the reform. It is rather the failure of the political leadership to address the lack of a shared sense of mission and the range of unintended, counter-productive effects, elicited by the reform itself which explain the overall incapacity to amend perceptions and behaviours among civil servants.

Zimbabwean displacement has significant implications for the evolution of state forms in Southern Africa. In South Africa, Zimbabwean migrants’ claims to residence confront exclusionary immigration laws. The South African government officials who are responsible for enforcing these laws have helped migrants to circumvent protocols and procedures while simultaneously overstepping the bounds of their authority to prevent migrants from entering the nation’s borders and residing within. Drawing upon a range of ethnographic and survey data, this study explores these two tendencies in government efforts to tackle smuggling across the Zimbabwean border, limit access to immigration permits and police undocumented residence in the city of Johannesburg. The article suggests that these seemingly contradictory developments – corrupt circumvention and overzealous enforcement – are both products of a single dynamic: the state’s monopolisation of legitimate movement. The ‘state’ is not being captu...